HOT: Playlist of Champions
If I remember correctly, when the summer Olympics were in Australia, the
opening ceremonies used two Men at Work songs, INXS’s greatest hits and
43 versions of “Waltzing Matilda” for the soundtrack. But popular music
in the U.K. has a bit of a deeper bench, so opening-ceremony director
Danny Boyle had a tough task assembling the playlist for this summer’s
games. Besides the travesty of including not one song from
legendary vocal group Spice Girls, Boyle did a nice job, featuring
Beatles, Bowie, Stones, Kinks, Queen, Sex Pistols, Duran Duran, New
Order, Led Zep, The Clash, Adele, Coldplay, Elton John and Tom Jones, as
well as “Relax” by the iconic Frankie Goes to Hollywood. He tried to
sneak in something from Green Day; luckily someone told him Billie Joe
Armstrong merely fakes a British accent when he sings.

WARM: The Keys to a Successful Ad Campaign
Rock superstars The Black Keys seemingly have no qualms about their
music being used to sell … well, pretty much anything.

But Home Depot
and Pizza Hut are learning that the duo actually likes to be compensated
for it, even to sell power tools and whatever a “cheese-bite pizza” is.
The band is suing both companies for co-opting their songs without
permission. The group issued a response sponsored by Subaru Legacy that
read, “We were so surprised when we heard about the ads, we pulled over
our sleekly-designed 2012 Legacy Sedan — with its spacious interior and
symmetrical all-wheel drive— to call our attorneys.”

COLD: Zhu Gotta Be Kidding MeFor decades, hearing a Beatles song anywhere outside of a Beatles
song was jarring, so protective was the band of its legacy. Today,
“Hello Goodbye” is a jingle for Target and we don’t even flinch. Beatles
desecration reaches a new low on July 31 when obnoxious toy robot
hamsters ZhuZhu Pets drop their latest joint, ZhuZhu Pets Meet The Beatles, a full-album cover of the Fab Four’s landmark early LP, Meet the Beatles.
(Fun trick: If you listen backwards to the end of “All My Loving,” you
can hear, “I buried Mr. Squiggles.”) We eagerly await Yoko Ono’s
not-hard-to-get-anymore endorsement (“It’s what John would have
wanted”).